How to Hide Apps from iPhone Home Screen?

iPhone by default will add all installed apps on the home screen. You can have unlimited home screens and access the apps by swiping left or right. Though this is easy, over period you may have hundreds of installed apps and searching is the only way you can easily find them. In such a case, keeping all the apps on the home screen will clutter the look. What you can do is to hide the apps from iPhone home screen so that you can keep the screen clean and find the apps by searching.

iPhone Home Screen

The home screen you see when unlocking your iPhone has three parts:

• Apps and other icon symbols like Wi-Fi, battery charging, etc.
• Bottom dock which is fixed and shown on all the home screens.
• Slider navigational dots between the apps and the dock and the number of dots indicate the number of screens you have.

You can gently swipe on the navigational dots to move through the screens. Alternatively, you can swipe left to go to next home screen and swipe right from the first screen to view the widgets. The last left home screen is called App Library which will show all the installed apps on your iPhone. Unlike many Android phones, the screens will not loop and end with App Library in right and widgets in the left. You need to swipe in opposite direction to navigate back to previous screens.

Why to Hide Apps from Home Screen?

Now that you know how the home screen works in iPhone and the good part is that you can hide the apps to manage the screens. It helps in the following situations:

• Remove the clutter and hide all unnecessary apps that you do not use frequently.
• Hide the app from your visibility so that you can reduce the usage time. For example, you can disable notifications on WhatsApp and hide the app to reduce the temptation of opening it frequently.
• You may have an infant and hiding the app can help accidental opening of sensitive apps.  

How to Hide Apps in iPhone Home Screen?

Whatsoever is the reason, there are two ways you can hide apps from the home screen:

• Hiding Single App
• Hiding Home Screen with Multiple Apps

Note that hiding the apps will not delete them from your iPhone. You can access them by using the search box (just swipe down on any home screen to open the search box).

Hide a Single App

Follow the below instructions to hide an app from your home screen:

• Find the app that you want to hide, tap and hold on it.
• It will show a list of menu items and select “Remove App” option from the list. Remember, by default iOS will show few items in the menu like Remove App, Share App and Edit Home Screen. However, the app developer can add additional items and hence you may see different set of menu items depending on the app.

• You will see another pop-up showing multiple options and select “Remove from Home Screen” option.

• This will hide the app from all home screens and move it to the App Library. As mentioned, you can access the App Library by swiping the extreme right end of the home screens or by searching.

Alternate Options for Hiding Single App

You can also follow the alternate option to hide a single app.

• Drag any app to the right corner of your home screen.
• This will first move the app to the next screen if available or will create a new home screen.
• Do not leave the app and finally you will see the App Library where you can drop the app on any existing folder.

Hide Entire Home Screen with Multiple Apps and Folders

The above method is easy; however, you need to hide the app one by one. Follow the below instructions when you have multiple apps to hide from your home screen.

• First step is to group all the apps you want to hide in a separate home screen.
• Simply drag the app you want to hide to the right edge of screen. This will create a new home screen and leave the app in that new screen. Similarly move all the apps to the newly created screen. Remember, you can also move the apps in a folder or move multiple apps at once.
• Now tap and hold anywhere on the home screen – you can do this on any app, or on the navigational dots or on the empty area.
• You will see all the apps are jiggling, take your finger and then tap on the navigational dots.

• This will show all home screen previews with a check mark below each screen (you can also directly tap and hold on the navigational dots and then release the finger to preview home screens).

• Simply tap on the check mark below the newly created home screen which contains all the apps you want to hide.
• You will see a minus icon appears now on the screen preview and tap on it.

• iPhone will show you a “Remove This Page?” pop-up informing you that the apps on the page will be available on the App Library.
• Tap on “Remove” to continue and the home screen will be hidden from the view.

After removing the check mark on the preview page, instead of tapping on the minus icon you can also tap on the “Done” button showing on top right corner. In this case, you will not see any additional pop-up but the result will be same that the home page will be hidden from viewing.

Adding Apps Back to Home Screen

You can find all your hidden apps are available in the App Library. As mentioned, you can access the App Library by swiping to the extreme right of the home screens. There are multiple ways to add back the hidden apps to your home screen.

• When you are in App Library, tap and hold the app you have hidden before. It will show a list of menu items and select the “Add to Home Screen” option from the list.

• Simply drag and move the app from App Library to the required home screen.
• Tap and hold on the navigational dots and release your finger to preview all home screens. Now enable the check mark below the hidden page to make that home screen visible.

Disable Hidden Apps from Search

It is not possible to hide an app with password or permanently hide from App Library in iPhone. Anyone can easily find the hidden apps on your phone by searching it from any home screen. However, you can avoid the apps appearing the search suggestions by disabling the following options in “Settings” app.

• Go to “Settings” app and select on “Siri & Search” item.
• Select your hidden app from the list.
• Disable “Show App in Search” option under “While Searching” section. For apps like Photos, you can also disable “Show Content in Search” option.
• Also, disable “Suggest App” and “Suggestion Notifications” under “Suggestions” section.

In this way, you can hide the app as well as not find it from the search. So, the only way to open the app is to find it from the App Library.